But.. I met someone at the gym who's been struggling with an esoteric problem on an ancient piece of software for over a decade, and they approached me to ask if I could solve it. I said "maybe", sat on it for a few days, and then replicated the issue on my machine and solved their problem in about an hour. I asked for $50 and they gave me double, which was wildly more rewarding than being paid $100k to write react all year, not that that salary is on the table any longer.
Is the job market so bad right now? I‘m in a privileged position (and not in the US), so have no clue of the state of things.
But in business, you need to charge an honest / fair amount. (sure, sometimes that 1 hour bug fix had $100K of 'value', but we could argue about honest / fair).
You mention being an employee at $100K a year. Double that, gives you a contractor rate of $100 an hour. That is the floor of what you should be asking floor; as in the absolute lowest. Another $50 or $100 an hour is still fair and honest in todays economy.
"You did awesome, but don't let it go to your head."
"Research shows" (I read long ago) that the happiest men are those take their wives' advice — that's certainly been true for my own N=1, for coming up on four decades now. I'd imagine we could replace "wives" with "spouses" and get comparable results.
Haven’t you just risked an infinite loop in your code?